SJ wrote:
- Time sensitive issues first : dates for the conference? There are
3 promising weekends : July 22-23, July 29-30, and August 5-6. The weekend in August seems to be the easiest for people to schedule, but may be more expensive for flights from Europe.
Brion notes:
As a note: SIGGRAPH 2006 will also be in Boston, runing July 30-August 3.
And Danah:
Blogher will be running July 28-29.
So that's a SIGGRAPH vote not to have Hacking days after the weekend of July 29-30, but to perhaps have Wikimania the weekend after; and a Blogher vote not to have Wikimania the weekend of July 29-30.
The other two potential weekends we mentioned, for completeness (which we mentioned briefly at the meeting) : June 24-25 and July 15-16. (July 4 week has its own set of problems.)
UPDATE: The events/rooms office still isn't sure of their summer construction schedule, but wrote yesterday that July 13-16 in particular we could almost surely have our pick of rooms; and that, on the other hand, we might not be able to use the medium-sized rooms in Austin Hall that first week of August.
- Conference planning software. No word from Austin, Jakob, or
Patrick; it is generally agreed that a license agreement on paper submission makes sense. JamesF mentions that he was at some point happy to help Austin improve on last year's reg system; regrets mentioning it again :-) It is also agreed we should choose our program planning software in time for the program team to look at it.
Just to clarify - Austin, Jakob and Patrick all discussed this on the mailing list and wiki before the meeting; 'no word' in my notes just meant that noone who knew the score was there to comment during/just before the last meeting. Since getting the program on track is one of our most pressing deadlines, let's discuss this more before the next meeting, and perhaps even look at some images or compare experiences then.
We should have a separate meeting focused on the program team and organization; if you're interested in this kind of work, please think about when you are free the week of November 21, and at least note interest here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania_2006#Future_meetings
(okay a few errors will be okay if it open source and they will be fixed soon), but please no alpha testing i think we will get more papers than last year and we will come realy in trouble. Deplhine wrote that she don't want pentadwarf because it's need new browsers, but how manny people will effect by this. Only the programm team and for tham it wouldn't be a problem to use a new firefox, or?
Pentabarf does seem cool. I'd like to get a what-the-hack organizer to comment on how it was for them to use it, assuming that they weren't also among the primary developers... could someone who knows the WTH folks ask them for input?
Ed Poor writes:
Conference goals should be:
- Enhance community interaction: make it more fun to be a Wikipedian / WikiMedian!
- Improve the quality of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects
Another unanswered goal question, as the definition of who is a 'wikipedian/wikimedian' is vague : should Wikimania help broaden the community of editing Wikimedians? Should it try to involve active users of the projects who are not active editors? Should it be reserved for academics, great speakers, and people donating editing-time or money to the projects?
++SJ